1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to methods of fabricating a semiconductor device. Additionally, an embodiment of this disclosure relates to methods of fabricating a semiconductor device including fine patterns.
As semiconductor devices become more highly integrated, various methods of realizing fine and small patterns have been continuously developed. For example, as semiconductor memory devices such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM) devices become increasingly integrated, cell patterns constituting memory cells of the DRAM devices have been shrunk to a minimum feature size of about 30 nanometers or less. However, it may be difficult to form the fine patterns having a minimum feature size of about 30 nanometers or less using a lithography process that employs a single exposure technique.
2. Related Art
According to general isolation technologies, a plurality of parallel line-shaped mask patterns are formed on a substrate, and predetermined portions of the line-shaped patterns are etched and removed using a cutting photo mask including hole-shaped opening patterns to form a plurality of separate active mask patterns which are two dimensionally arrayed on the substrate. For example, a plurality of parallel line-shaped patterns may be formed on a substrate using a spacer patterning technology, and predetermined portions of each of the line-shaped patterns may be removed using a cutting photo mask having hole-shaped opening patterns to form a plurality of hole patterns that divide each of the line-shaped patterns into a plurality of separated fine patterns.
In the fabrication of fine patterns using cutting photo masks with hole-shaped opening patterns, the size of the hole-shaped opening patterns has been continuously reduced with the increase in the integration density of semiconductor devices. Thus, there may be some limitations in successfully cutting the line-shaped patterns without any misalignment between the line-shaped patterns and the cutting photo mask. In the event that the cutting photo masks, having the hole-shaped opening patterns, are misaligned with the line-shaped patterns on the substrate, lengths of the fine patterns may be non-uniform degrading the reliability and/or the electrical characteristics of the semiconductor devices.